Incomprehensible Screaming

Satyricon/Enslaved – The Forest is My Throne / Yggdrassil

It's time for another Satyricon album. This one is a split EP so Satyricon only have four songs on it, and there's not really much to say about them that I didn't say about Dark Medieval Times. Save for a nice acoustic moment in 'Min Hyllest Til Vinterland', and the cool pleasure/pain moaning during the intro to 'Night of the Triumphator', it's inoffensive but boring.

Enslaved's stuff is a lot better. They have more of the intensity and energy that characterises decent black metal and it's a lot more fun to listen to, even if from a purely technical perspective there's little to differentiate them from Satyricon or Emperor. Unfortunately they're let down by some atrocious production. I know black metal is supposed to have shitty production, but there's a big difference between shitty as in 'giving things a raw, primal feel' and shitty as in 'barely being able to discern the drums because it sounds like they were recorded from a mike embedded in the producers rectum'. In spite of that they've still managed to make a fun EP.